How we make winning email design

GM! Paperboy here 🗞️

Here’s a few emails I’m liking:

• Sundays for Dogs Story-Based Email

• Evereden Creative Promo Hero

• Bullymake Flow Chart

• Jeni’s Ice Cream 🤤

• Nude Project ChatGPT Design

• Tower28 New Release

Hero images are about to get weird.

Good weird that it is.

And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out DudeWipes’ emails. Go to this Lemme email. Go to this 1906 email.

These are all emails from big-time DTC brands that were mostly made using AI.

But that’s not the interesting part.

The interesting part is the massive leap Gemini just took with its latest image model.

I know, I know. Image model, shmimage model. We’re all tired of hearing Sam Altman share new model updates and proclaiming the robots are taking over.

But I wouldn’t be sharing this with you if I didn’t believe it was time.

Time for marketers to truly get weird.

To take their wildest ideas and bring them to life.

Because up until now, AI image-gen was a party trick.

Something gimmicky you showed your family that worked 70% of the time.

And even if you did generate your concept well, it took designers hours of prompting and re-prompting to get something that could actually be sent out.

But as of this month, things changed.

This new gemini model is scary good.

Here’s a simple example to start.

I took the popular product Obvi and I asked Gemini to generate an influencer holding it. This was the first take!

Let’s do something more advanced with text. This took 2 takes and ~40 seconds to generate in total.

A slightly crazier concept. This took 3 takes and approx 1 minute total.

You can take any silly idea you have for an email, prompt it together yourself in Gemini, then pass it off to your designer to bring it to life.

They don’t need a photoshoot. They don’t need a moodboard. They probably only need a slightly more specific prompt with visual guidelines to make it right.

We’ve been using these features internally at our agency and this was one of my client’s reactions last week.

That same email ended up getting featured in an email industry newsletter a few days later AND had record click-through rates for a non-promotional email. This isn’t a brag - it’s me showing you that the new era of email design is here.

So how do you implement?

The process is simple:

1. Train your copywriters & designers on using Gemini (i.e. fwd them this email)

2. Ask copywriters to include 1 or 2 pieces of Gemini-generated inspiration in each email concept they submit

3. Empower your designers to use Gemini, ChatGPT, Midjourney, Firefly and other tools to generate imagery for design.

The days of stock imagery are numbered. We’re entering a new era of marketing and design, and I couldn’t be more excited.

Graphic designers can make cooler designs than ever. Marketers can propose crazier ideas than ever. We all win.

Meme of the Week

That’s all for now,
Paperboy 🗞

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